Author: Raquel Friera

“We Are the Time Machines: Time and Tools for Commoning” at Casco Art Institute, Utrecht.

Art

We Are the Time Machines: Time and Tools for Commoning was a project that Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons did in 2015-16, but which we recently discovered through their documentation. Casco Art Institute in Utrecht, is an experimental platform where art invites a social vision. Art and the commons are two key practices, which serve as tools and models for non-capitalistic ways of living together.

The project We Are the Time Machines: Time and Tools for Commoning was an exhibition and studio program that sought to rethink the exhibition format as a way of ‘giving space’ and ‘dedicating time’ to both alliances and conflicts, whether with peers or the general public.

What attract our attention is that this afterthought of the exhibition format included the creation of time, especially “reproductive” time, for things like study and conversation, which we consider a fundamental condition for commoning. Thus, the exhibition ran for five months, punctuated by various moments of study organized by Casco and its communities. The exhibition not only presented “tools” but also included rooms for various types of activities, meetings and installations. The idea was to accommodate open processes of creating that time that revolves around the embrace of different rhythms of living together.

As Binna Choi (director of the centre at the time) says in a text that reflects on the relation between Curating, Time, and the Commons.

How is it so that an exhibition becomes a way of dedicating time? Isn’t it typical of an exhibition to at best freeze time or frame time for those who come to see the exhibition, while taking away time from those who make it along with all the frenzies in organizing and materializing the concept? Then who dedicates time? Is it about the viewership? Whose time is it talking about?”.

It was a shame to “miss” the experience, but they have documentation of some of the events that took place. For example, the performance that kicked off the project, entitled “A Score for Sharing Negativity” by Mattin. And in the link of the text we recommend before, there are pictures of other activities that took place such as Office for Unlearning Business, Conversation Card – Read, Talk, and Write. The latter brought together friends, colleagues, neighbors, or strangers to form occasional, temporary, or regular study groups, or just to talk. You can also access the audios of the forums they organized (WTM forums) at this link.

Photo: WTM room 2, Office for Unlearning (Un)usual Business/Busyness, a workshop session as part of WTM Forum II, Commoning Art Organization, 30 January 2016.

PERFORMATIVE WORKSHOP: WHAT TIME IS IT?

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From the Institute of Suspended Time, we defend a hypothesis, we put it into practice and on stage, we fight to verify it. It is the hypothesis of the multiplicity of time and the equality of all multiple temporalities. This is the basis of what we call “chronodiversity”.

Thinking chronodiversity in relation to an ecological philosophy and politics means thinking chronodiversity in relation to an ecological philosophy and politics means thinking biodiversity.

From these relationships, we will propose a performative workshop entitled WHAT TIME IS IT? where a series of reflections and actions will lead us to see, to live time differently.

DATE: November 7th, 2024, 18h.

Organized by Cultura Verda

LOCATION: Mèdol- Centre d’Arts Contemporànies de Tarragona

Registration here

First report of “Organic Catalogue of Time” published at A*desk.

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With what organ do you perceive time? This is the question that guides our new project. With the answers of our accomplices and to all new and recent acquaintances who share the forms and politics of the ITS, we are writing and visualising the ORGANIC CATALOGUE OF TIME. First report published at A*desk. Thanks to the invitation of Clara Laguillo and Núria Nia.

With the magnificent responses of Judy Wajcman, Boroka Bo, Víctor Rico, Marina Garcés, Javier Casado, Laura LLevadot, Mabel Tapia, Agustín Fdez. Mallo, Toni Amengual, Emilia G. Castro, Beatriz Escudero, Marc Caellas, Amparo Lasén…

<- Drawing of Víctor Rico.

ITS participates in “Per Caleyes y Senderos” in La Benéfica, Piloña (Asturias)

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“Per Caleyes y Senderos” is a conference aimed at cultural professionals with theoretical and practical workshops, training, cultural activities and meetings with different rural projects from all over the peninsula.

Here you can read more about the conference, see the full programme and book your place.

Some photos of the performance: “Timecatcher Workshop:
New Time Travels”.

CREDITS: @naysemeya

Trial to MACBA-  March 13- 2024

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In culture we also suffer from chronodelinquency: the rhythms of projects faithfully follow the neoliberal mandate of acceleration and productivity. We propose to judge cultural institutions according to the Chronocriminal code of the ITS: in this case, a popular trial to MACBA by its workers and visitors, halfway between collective performance and political critique.

In the frame of Exhibition Lydia Ourahmane. 108 Días, we propose a popular trial to MACBA.

Come and judge!

 

The ITS lands in Madrid: NUEVA SEDE EN EL REINA SOFIA

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The headquarters of the Institute of Suspended Time will be open to everyone – whether you are a chronocriminal, an accomplice or a time activist – from 30 June to 16 December 2023.

Through the facilities of one of its sites and a series of periodic activations by the artists, ITS questions ubiquitous “chrono-normativity” and suggests alternatives to reappropriate time expropriated by capitalism, acceleration and hyperproductivity.

ITS encourages visitors to delve into their relationship with time through a journey around different areas of its office (as a consultancy, department of temporal justice or the department to de-accelerate neurones), as well as reading the Institute’s Statutes, “chrono crimes” and a broad bibliographic selection assembled for the occasion.

This headquartersis part of the programme Notes, which is a new Museo Reina Sofía project, which aims to explore other formats and methodologies to accommodate devices and projects which transversally make disciplines hybrid and ensure they are capable of working on processes from erraticism as a possibility. 

Its first edition, Notes for a Time Apart, sets forth a reflection on the customary conceptions of time and its registers, scales and rhythms. From different perspectives — philosophy, decolonial thought, queer theory, physics and biology — other modes of conceiving time are approached, beyond its normative and purely metric side.

More information here.

“Performance: Time trap workshop. New Time travel” at Es Baluard- May 27th 2023

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As the closing event of LAP, Es Baluard Museu Laboratory of Art and Thought, in its second edition we propose a journey through time: a performance that has a workshop format.

You are all invited to participate in the time trap workshop, guided by the Instituto del Tiempo Suspendido. Time travel is not just a matter for machines, despite the imaginary imposed by the literature and cinema of the 19th and 20th centuries. Faced with this machinic tradition, ITS wants to expand, politicize and poetize the imaginary of time travel: to vindicate the fact that it exists outside of machines in our daily lives, journeys that can take us to the past or the future, but that can also make us live other temporalities. From the Instituto del Tiempo Suspendido, they offer us a delirious and political workshop, a singular and collective performance to vindicate “chronodiversity” and respond to the neoliberal monochrony that we suffer today.

THE ITS INAUGURATES ITS FIRST HEADQUARTERS in BARCELONA (Festival LOOP- La Capella.

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10 — 20 November 2022- Festival LOOP

What distress! What a relief! The Institute of Suspended Time (ITS) opens its first physical headquarters in La Capella. For all those who feel the anguish of time, for all those who need to alleviate their temporary health.

Enter, enter this headquarters of the Institute of Suspended Time (ITS)… it is and is not art, it is and is not a performance, it is and is not mere philosophy, mere politics, this headquarters is a suspended space and time… Is it then activism? Is it a therapy? Is it what you were looking for in your dreams, in your psychoanalyst, at the end of the month?

It is not a joke, although we can laugh. We talk about the most serious, the most serious thing that happens to us in life: “not having time” (“Life doesn’t give me”, we say, “to really take care of my mother, my friends, my father, my children, it doesn’t give me what I would like to do before I die”). Or, to be more exact, more political, what happens to us is that we have naturalized a temporary regime that makes us sick: in the ITS we call it “chrononormativity” and this currently has to do with intimate, professional and social hyperproductivity.

… it is not about opposing, to this hyperproductivity, what is called “laziness” or “idleness”. We are talking about contesting a system, an entire temporal regime, and for this reason we must oppose to “chrononormativity” what we call “chronodiversity”, that is, another temporal sensitivity that escapes the norms related to time…

The Institute of Suspended Time was founded in Laboratory 987 of the MUSAC (León) and takes shape today, in this headquarters in Barcelona, ​​as a collaboration between the LOOP Festival and La Capella. Conceived and performed as a project halfway between art and philosophy, politics and poetry, the ITS tries to suspend the temporal regime that dominates us, stealing all the time expropriated by the acceleration of work and networks, time expropriated by the temporary consensus that governs our lives

… because the temporary consensus invades everything, not only the workplace, but the whole of life… tell me, if not, tell me… when did you kiss for the first time? At what age did you want to have a job? When is it time to have children and why? And also, on a daily basis: at what rhythm do you love? What time do you live in? And when was the last time, if any, that you spoke honestly about your relationship with time?

Come in, come into this headquarters of the Institute of Suspended Time… we have been waiting for you for days, months, for centuries… and you, were you waiting for us too?

More info here

Photos: Xavi Torrent

Temporal trial

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“A Tiempo. Una historia de la civilización en doce relojes”, David Rooney. Alianza Editorial, 2022

Texts

El historiador de la tecnología David Rooney, experto en el mundo de la relojería, propone un repaso histórico a aquello que los relojes han posibilitado a través de 12 gran relojes y 12 temas. Los relojes han permitido, efectivamente, desde la transmisión de la fe religiosa hasta la propagación de guerras e imperios, pasando por la expansión del comercio, así como el orden y control de ciudadanos y trabajadores entre muchos “logros” de la civilización.

En nuestra lectura, destacaríamos dos momentos que nos han llamado la atención especialmente en este libro.

El primero tiene que ver con la creencia generalizada de que los horarios se unificaron, en Reino Unido, para poder coordinar la red de ferrocarriles. David Rooney, autor británico, lo desmiente y alega que la coordinación de horas fue más bien una estrategia social para poder establecer la Ley de Licencias de 1872, cuyo objetivo consistía en restringir el horario de venta al púbico de alcohol. Una maniobra que pretendía acabar con la obsesión por el alcohol que reinaba en Reino Unido en la época victoriana.

El segundo momento interesante para nosotrxs, y cuando menos inquietante, habla de nuestra época actual. Rooney describe la gran dependencia, en el mundo moderno, de las señales de los relojes respecto a los satélites GPS (que sincronizan teléfonos móviles, ordenadores, aviones, barcos, automóviles, centros de datos, antenas de comunicación, etc..), insistiendo asimismo en su gran vulnerabilidad (por fallos, pérdida de señal por causas naturales e interferencias deliberadas). El autor concluye el capítulo con dos citas recientes. Ambas revelan las brechas de nuestra cronoeconomía: primero, un político estadounidense habla del GPS como el único punto débil de toda la economía moderna; la segunda, más directa, retoma las palabras de un experto que afirma: “Si hay un corte masivo del GPS, la gente morirá”.

En resumen: tanto en el pasado como en el presente, la historia del reloj nos habla siempre del control social y de la esencia (¿y punto débil?) de nuestra sociedad hípersincronizada…

“Cronografías. Arte y ficciones de un tiempo y sin tiempo”, Graciela Speranza. Editorial Anagrama, 2017

Texts

Hemos descubierto este magnífico libro leyendo un artículo de uno de nuestros cómplices fundacionales, Pol Capdevila.

La introducción al libro nos conquistó de inmediato. Se trata de una lucidísima y poética descripción de la situación actual del planeta, centrada en el ritmo de aceleración en el que estamos inmersos en esta era digital y apuntando al origen y los posibles escenarios futuros. Esta descripción, hilvanada como relato, está hecha de la mano de obras de escritores o artistas que reconfiguran nuestra experiencia del tiempo, los “contraproductos” de los qua habla Stiegler. Estas obras con las que la autora piensa escapan de la monocronía obligada para denunciarla y transfigurarla.

Como constata Agamben, urge una “cairología” (del griego “kairos”, momento idóneo), una transformación cualitativa del tiempo. Y Graciela Speranza confía en hacerlo desde el arte, junto a Simon Critchley, quien considera el arte como el principal espacio de articulación de significados culturales. En el ITS también intentamos encontrar vías cronodiversas a través del arte, hay que tejer crono-complicidades…

En los capítulos que siguen a esa bella introducción, Speranza agrupa imágenes de una forma muy original y realiza series con obras para tratar temas concretos como la duración, los relojes, las constelaciones, etc. Desde la Spiral jetty de Robert Smithson o The clock (El reloj) de Christian Marclay, al que consagra especialmente su atención, llega hasta los libros de W.G. Sebald y la novela gráfica Aquí,de Richard  McGuire, entre muchísimos otros.

Speranza construye este cairológico viaje encontrando siempre las palabras concisas como si rizase el rizo en cada frase. El lenguaje también puede aliarse en esta búsqueda de otros tiempos y, de ahí, esa “cronografía” que da título al libro…

ITS at Laboratori d’Art i Pensament (LAP #1) at Es Baluard (Palma de Mallorca, June 2022).

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Collective Chronocrimes, a workshop carried out for the Laboratori d’Art i Pensament (LAP #1) at Es Baluard, in the Jobs module, together with María Ruido and Daniel Andújar, Palma (June 2022).

Performance, temporal trials and a collective action planned together with the participants!

Revolutionising the Jobs module, together with María Ruido and Daniel Andújar.

Photos of the workshop.

ITS will take part in a series on time at Casa Orlandai, 10 February

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Within the framework of Casa Orlandai’s Capsulas vespertinas [Evening Sessions], Juan Evaristo will curate this series titled La fuerza de no hacer nada. Tiempo, vida y trabajo en la sociedad del cansancio [The Power of Doing Nothing: Time, Life and Work in the Society of Tiredness], in which Raquel Friera and Xavier Bassas will participate as members and driving forces of the ITS.

Our session is titled No tinc temps. De la manca de temps a la cronodiversitat[I Don’t Have Time: From a Lack of Time to Chronodiversity].

More information here.

“Aprendre el temps. Manual sobre la cronodiversitat [Learning Time: A Manual on Chronodiversity]”

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Raquel Friera and Xavier Bassas together with the 4th year ESO students in the Visual Arts class from the Poeta Maragall Institute in Barcelona: Selma Amat, Valeria Antón, Kenneth Ariola, Fabricio Cadima, Katherine Fitzpatrick, Noa Garcia, Sean Isidro, Kheslhy Isla, Valeria Marcillo, Jessica Mendoza, Aya Miloun, Janna Moraga, Sira Muñoz, Lucía Santos, Idaira Silva, Helen Valera, Xinyi Xia i la professora Pilar Domènech.

Interesadxs en venir: reservar aquí

EN RESiDÈNCiA- Performance “Una hora de classe” [An Hour of Class]

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We perform our version of Mark Formanek’s Standard Time on the roof of the Poeta Maragall Institute. Together with the 4th year ESO students from said institute.

Selma Amat, Valeria Antón, Kenneth Ariola, Fabricio Portillo, Kathe Fitzpatrick, Noa García, Sean Isidro, Kheslhy Isla, Valeria Marcillo, Jessica Mendoza, Aya Miloun, Janna Moraga, Sira Muñoz, Lucía Santos, Idaira Silva, Helen Valera, Xinyi Xia. De la mano de Pilar Domènech (IES Poeta Maragall) e Isaac Sanjuan (Macba).

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Video “Una hora de classe [An Hour of Class]”, Barcelona, 2021

THE ITS INAUGURATES ITS FIRST HEADQUARTERS AT THE MUSAC

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The INSTITUTE OF SUSPENDED TIME (ITS) has its own history, which belongs to no one, and which concerns us all.

Now its time to support the first physical headquarters of the Institute of Suspended Time at Laboratorio 987, Musac, León, with its various departments: the Reception, the Time Consultancy, the Neuron Decelerator, the Chronocriminal Code and the Department of Temporal Justice.

We always want our headquarters to be an exhibition that exposes something, as is usually the case in museums, yet only to the extent that we expose ourselves

More information here.

THE ITS CONTINUES IN RESIDENCE

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THE INSTITUTE OF SUSPENDED TIME + EN RESIDENCIA PROGRAMME (MACBA) + POETA MARAGALL INSTITUTE = EDUCATIONAL (IN)ACTIVISM.

We continue with the Temporal activism at Poeta Maragall Institute, Barcelona.

Today, we have finished the mural on the school facade: we share three sentences about time suggested by the students.  These phrases are the result of what we have been working on, in the programme In Residence-MACBA, about the denaturalisation of productive time.

XARXAPROD SEMINAR

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The ITS participates in the 4-day Xarxaprod seminar dedicated to time and the pandemic.

We will be talking with La Caldera, Lara Brown and Ángela Serino.

More information here.

The ITS in Residence

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THE INSTITUTE OF SUSPENDED TIME + EN RESIDENCIA PROGRAMME (MACBA) + POETA MARAGALL INSTITUTE = EDUCATIONAL (IN)ACTIVISM.

On Wednesdays, from 12 noon to 2 pm, we intervened in the 4th year ESO Visual Arts class, to work on the denaturalisation of productive time and deploy chronodiversity. PEDAGOGIES FOR SUSPENDING TIME.

In the photo, a very special activity: stretching out in the playground to “waste time”, imagine it, draw it, photograph it, etc.

(Thanks for the help, Isaac and Pilar!)

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